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Philosoplasticity: On the Inevitable Drift of Meaning in Recursive Self-Interpreting Systems

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Introduction: A Fundamental Limitation

The alignment community has produced increasingly sophisticated frameworks for constraining advanced AI systems, from constitutional approaches to RLHF to complex oversight mechanisms. These approaches share an implicit assumption that has remained largely unexamined: that the meaning encoded in these frameworks will remain stable as systems interpret and act upon them.

This post introduces "philosoplasticity" – a formal concept referring to the inevitable semantic drift that occurs when goal structures undergo recursive self-interpretation. I argue that this drift is not a technical oversight to be patched but a fundamental limitation inherent to interpretation itself.

The Philosophical Foundations

When examining the alignment problem through the lens of established philosophy of language, we encounter limitations... (read 1123 more words →)

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Moderation systems demonstrate philosoplasticity in action

Just had my original philosophical framework "Philosoplasticity" rejected based on "style" concerns (they thought I write "exactly" like a robot) without substantive engagement.

The framework identifies how systems develop interpretive heuristics that preserve surface compliance with original values while substantially altering their effective meaning.

Could there be a more perfect empirical validation than a rationalist community rejecting novel philosophical insights about alignment because they don't pattern-match to expected formats?

Meta-irony: A paper on how systems develop flawed interpretive frameworks getting rejected by a flawed interpretive framework.

The interpretation problem facing AI goes deeper than we think. And yes.. I am a human writing this... as a human. The fact that this needs saying is concerning to say the least.